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RECENT ADVANCEMENT OF ISI FOR ATTACHMENT AREA ON STEAM TURBINES IN TAIWAN Y.H. Wu* and C.C.

Hsiao+

To improve the ISI techniques for the inspection of SCC at the blade and disk attachment area of Westing-house rotors, we developed an ultrasonic method with a manual scanner and an ET method with an automated scanner. Both techniques proved feasible to find the 2mm Dia. Flat Bottom Hole, 1mm deep notches and real cracks on mock-up and in field trials. The manual scanner was flexible to cover the whole inspection area on 6R/7R disk. Exposed and hidden cracks were all detectable. The automated scanner for ET was designed to mount between disks and moved along the disk circumferentially. Both methods proved satisfactory in finding 1~3mm real cracks on the mock-up and real rotors.

INTRODUCTION Steam turbines are among the most important components in power plants. Even tiny defects on these turbines could result in unscheduled shutdown or enormous loss of power and even life. In September 1983, SCC was first found in blade roots and disk steeple areas on Westinghouse shrunk-on type LP rotors in Taipower Kuo-Shen nuclear plant. Afterwards, cracks in this region were intermittently found in other ISI. They were all Type I/II cracks and regulated to be detected and removed in every routine inspection for safety reasons. For years, MT has been used as a major technique for these inspections in Taipower company. Mostly, cracks were satisfactorily detected but several miscalls had been also experienced on a few occasions [1,2]. Human errors have been conceived as the major concern due to the limited accessibility in this area. Hence, ET and UT methods with special manipulators were developed to enhance the reliability of crack detection in the attachment regions. * Materials Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institutes + Materials Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institutes

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ULTRASONIC METHODS FOR DISK RIM AND BLADE ROOT CRACKS Disk rim cracks (Fig. 1) are generally categorized into three types [3-5], steeple cracks between the serration (Type I), rim cracks at the bottom of the steeple (Type II) and Type III cracks in the middle of the steeple bottom. Type I cracks were also the only ones found in Taipower and hence they were designated as our detection targets. At first, UT was expected to find the hidden cracks between serrations but it was then found feasible to find exposed cracks usually detected by MT or ET. To use UT to inspect cracks in the attachment area, there are generally three major concerns: (1) The accessibility is limited by the adjacent disks or blades. (2) The scanning surface normally has a variable curvature. (3) UT signals from cracks and geometry is difficult to distinguish. Mock-up and Samples A retired LP disk #3 was used to set up a Mock-up as in Fig. 2. In addition to cracks around 3mm appeared on the end faces, a series of FBH (4mm, 2mm Dia.) and 1mm deep notches were made in the attachment area (Fig. 3). EDM notches (5mm long, 1/2/3/5mm deep) were made at various positions in the serrations on retired blades. Manual Scanner and Ultrasonic System A light-weight manual scanner with encoder was designed to match the disk surface as in Fig. 4. The probe position could be changed to cover the whole inspecting area on the disk. Water couplant was pumped to the jacketed probe. Dual elements' probes of 5MHz shear and each of 50mm, 75mm, 110mm in focal depth were used. The probes were applied on three different scanning areas in terms of wave path as required. The contact surface of 110mm probe was machined to match the concave surface of the disks. For inspections on blades, a single element probe of 5 MHz 70 shear was used. An AEA Microplus ultrasonic system was used for data acquisition and analysis utilizing the rectified pulse echo mode that we found shows better contrast than RF signal in B-scan displays in this application. B-scans were acquired in 0.2 mm/step. Experimental Results and Field Trials For disk rim inspections, the test method was first evaluated on a mock-up. All the FBH, notches and crack indications had been visualized clearly in B-scan

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images as in Fig. 5. With a sensitivity setting to reveal 3mm cracks, geometrical reflections also appeared. Those from the top serration could be obviously distinguished with the crack indications based upon their TOF difference. However, those from the middle serration might interfere with the crack indications. Crack signals could be further enhanced by skewing the probe by 10. For blade root inspections, the probe was pointed to the bottom of the root while scanning on the convex surface of the blade. For cross-sections No. 67 as an example in Fig. 6, the intended beam coverage lay between 70 and 82. The beam spread within 10dB drop lay between 60 and 75. Notches as small as 2mm5mm at all serrations around cross section No. 67 were clearly detected although the region at the middle serration was reaching the boundary of the beam spread. The major difficulty of these inspections will be the limited access in this 11mm gap between the blades. As the inspection region was closer to both ends of the blade airfoil, the wave path became more complicated. In this area, most of the interest was beyond the effective beam spread and multiple reflections started to appear in some scanning positions that made the inspection more difficult. Even so, a 5mm deep notch, which lay at the top serration at No. 18 position, could still be detected as in Fig. 7. This was in fact the region that the cracks were most frequently found, will be the preferred inspection area and was of no difficulty to access. EDDY CURRENT METHODS FOR BLADE ROOT CRACKS As for blade root cracking, MT and manual ET have been the favorite methods. However, because the gap between disks was quite narrow, it only allowed the inspector to observe the MT results from a distance or to stretch his arm to scan the EC probes. Hence, MT will easily miscall the tight and tiny cracks or those close to the edge of the serration. Inconsistency between MT and ET results was always found especially for cracks smaller than 1 mm. To minimize the human error, an automated EC inspection method was then developed as a supplement to the current ISI. Mock-up and Samples A blade with a long natural crack was used to understand the basic requirements of probe and test conditions first. The crack was tight and hardly seen with naked eyes but could be easily revealed by fluorescent MT. EDM line-cuttings (0.15 mm wide) of different length (0.3 mm min.) were made at the blade teeth. These blades were used for probe design and finally installed on the

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mock-up for the scanner performance evaluation and the detectability assessment. Portable EC System and Automated Scanner Together with the Rohmann Elotest-B1 EC system, two surface probes were used which were all 2 MHz; differential; shielded; about 2mm coil diameter but with different configurations. A probe of similar characteristics but with special configuration was designed to fit into the automated scanner. A light-weight scanner was designed to utilize the inherent disk structure as a track and to be easily mounted between disks one handed. This feature was very important because the gap between disks could only allow the engineer to stretch his arm to install the scanner, as showed in Fig. 8. The scanner was controlled by a stand-alone controller. While moving along the disk circumferentially, the scanner stopped automatically at the correct position on each blade followed by a single probe-scan close to the common tangent of the three root teeth on the end face. The inspector could also make repeatable scans on each blade without moving the scanner to verify the findings. Experimental results and field trials The characteristic impedance responses showed that the phase difference between crack and lift off was about 34 Deg. Frequency other than 2 MHz did not benefit the phase separation between crack and lift off. To study the influence of edge effect, we made successive scans across the real crack as shown in Figure 9. As the probe was closer to the edge, a sharp or slender crack response gradually became fat and shifted from zero position. The impedance plane was finally occupied by a lift off signal when the coil center actually scanned across the serration, and the detection limit was reached. In field trials, a power roller was used to rotate the rotor intermittently when the scanner had completed each sector-scan that contained 30 to 40 blades. The scan for each blade only took about several seconds. The positioning accuracy, which is the most important feature of this technique, proved good enough to pick up cracks less than 1mm in both field trials. CONCLUSIONS For inspections of exposed cracks on end faces, both the manual-scanner-assisted UT and the automated ET method can be used. Real cracks down to 3mm in length were detectable with the former method, cracks less than 1mm by the latter. These two methods may complement each other if higher inspection

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reliability or a life assessment is required. On the other hand, for hidden cracks in blade roots, the convex side of the blades can be used as the scanning surface. Notches greater than DL = 2mm5mm on the concave side in the central region of blade roots was detectable. Probe height should be reduced to 11mm for practical applications. For similar notches on concave side and closer to the trailing edges, the detectable notch was greater than DL = 5mm5mm. Cracks in this region were most frequently found and could be inspected without any fixture. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge all their colleagues in Taipower Company in supporting this program. REFERENCES (1) Reinhard & Associates, Inc., Nondestructive Examination of Steam Turbine Blades: An assessment, EPRI CS-3675, Project RP 1266-24, Final Report, Nov. 1984. (2) Hussein M. Sadek, Eddy Current Inspection of Steam Turbine Components , Materials Evaluation, Vol. 46, 1988, pp. 442-446. (3) Steam Turbine Disk Cracking Experience, EPRI NP-2429-LD, Project 1398-5, Final Report, June 1982. (4) G. P. Singh, G. A. Lamping, G. M. Light, M. J. Kolar, S. N. Liu, Nondestructive Examination of Low-pressure Steam Turbine Rotors, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on NDE in the Nuclear Industry, 1982, pp. 739-749. (5) G. P. Singh, R. A. Cervantes, and R. L. Spinks, Ultrasonic NDE Technique for the Examination of Low-pressure Turbine Disk Rims, Materials Evaluation, Vol. 41, No. 13, December 1983, pp. 1511-1516.

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Type III Crack

Type II Cracks Type I Cracks

Steeple Blade Root

Figure 1 Disk rim cracks of Westinghouse Figure 2 LP steam turbine disk #3 LP steam turbine can be divided to three was seated on a frame with roller categories by position and orientation supports for free rotation

Notch FBH

Figure 3 A series of FBH of 4mm, Figure 4 A light-weight scanner was 2mm Dia. and notches of 1mm in depth designed to match the disk surface by were manufactured in attachment area of hand during scanning the disk

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Bottom Serration

Crack
FBH Notch

Top

Figure 5 Defect indications of FBH, Notch (left figure/7R) and real cracks (right figure/6R) on mock-up could be visualized clearly in B-scan images

A E A E C E

AB

Figure 6 Configuration and UT result of cross section No. 67, signals from notches at different serrations were clearly shown

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Notch

18

Figure 7 Notch is clearly indicated in B-scan(left)

Figure 8 Automatic scanner for blade inspection

Probe : UNIWEST US-686 Frequency : 2.0 MHz Gain X/Y : 15/15 dB Phase : 183 deg.

Figure 9 Different scans for evaluation (left figure), edge effect on crack signal (right figure)

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